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The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm Needs to See the Whole Graph: A Typical Case

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arxiv 2004.09002 v1 pith:PUEPSSRZ submitted 2020-04-20 quant-ph cs.CC

classification quant-phcs.CC
keywords algorithmgraphgraphsindependentqaoaquantumapproximatefinding
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The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm can naturally be applied to combinatorial search problems on graphs. The quantum circuit has p applications of a unitary operator that respects the locality of the graph. On a graph with bounded degree, with p small enough, measurements of distant qubits in the state output by the QAOA give uncorrelated results. We focus on finding big independent sets in random graphs with dn/2 edges keeping d fixed and n large. Using the Overlap Gap Property of almost optimal independent sets in random graphs, and the locality of the QAOA, we are able to show that if p is less than a d-dependent constant times log n, the QAOA cannot do better than finding an independent set of size .854 times the optimal for d large. Because the logarithm is slowly growing, even at one million qubits we can only show that the algorithm is blocked if p is in single digits. At higher p the algorithm "sees" the whole graph and we have no indication that performance is limited.

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Cited by 13 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. OpenAlex reports about 90 citations worldwide. Full citation record

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  4. Quantum Variational Approaches to the Maximum Independent Set Problem at Utility Scale

    quant-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    Variational quantum methods with spectral reordering, sparsification, CVaR optimization, and ancilla-assisted superposition solve MIS to optimality on 64-, 99-, and 180-vertex graphs, the largest such gate-based demon...

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  6. Optimizing Cost Hamiltonian Compilation for Max-Cut QAOA on Unweighted Graphs Using Global Controls and Qubit Bit Flips

    quant-ph 2025-08 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    For unweighted graphs, path graphs require at least n-1 global coupling layers, every graph can be compiled in at most 2.5n+2 layers, and perfect matching compilations are tied to Hadamard matrices.

  7. Quantum-informed surrogate sampling for combinatorial optimization

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    QISS classically samples a pairwise model built from O(N) low-weight QAOA correlators and outperforms standard QAOA at larger depths on MaxCut and MIS benchmarks.

  8. Landscape-Similarity-Guided Optimization in Divide-and-Conquer QAOA

    quant-ph 2026-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    DO-QAOA shows that the 2^m subproblems in frozen-qubit divide-and-conquer QAOA share near-identical variational landscapes, so training one representative and transferring its parameters cuts training cost from expone...

  9. Evolving Hard Maximum Cut Instances for Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms

    cs.ET 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The authors evolve max-cut graph instances in a graph autoencoder's latent space that are easy or hard for RQAOA relative to the Goemans-Williamson algorithm, then analyze their features.

  10. Improving Quantum Optimization to Achieve Quadratic Time Complexity

    quant-ph 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Penta-O sets QAOA parameters level by level using five energy measurements per level, cutting parameter-setting cost to O(p^2) circuit executions for depth p.

  11. Separating Geometry From Interference in Constrained Quantum Optimization

    quant-ph 2026-07 reject novelty 5.0 of 10

    For product-space constrained quantum optimization, the mixer's absolute amplitude transport reduces to a Hamming-shell Markov chain; a certified success bound then requires a phase-alignment condition that the paper ...

  12. Near-Optimal Parameter Tuning of Level-1 QAOA for Ising Models

    quant-ph 2025-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    For p=1 QAOA on Ising models, the paper derives analytic bandwidth bounds, eliminates the mixer angle to reduce optimization to a one-dimensional line search, and proves that for regular graphs the global optimum coin...

  13. Networked Quantum Services

    quant-ph 2025-05 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    A survey of networked quantum services, from distributed quantum computers and cloud platforms to programming languages and standardization efforts.

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